There are many examples of functional elements or components which can provide, produce, or detect electromagnetic signals or other characteristics. An example of using the functional components is using them as an array of a display drivers in a display where many pixels or sub-pixels are formed with an array of electronic elements. For example, an active matrix liquid crystal display includes an array of many pixels or sub-pixels which are fabricated using amorphous silicon or polysilicon circuit elements. Additionally, a billboard display or an signage display such as store displays and airport signs are also among the many electronic devices employing these functional components.
Functional components have also been used to make other electronic devices. One example of such use is that of a radio frequency (RF) identification tag (RFID tag) which contains a chip or several chips that are formed with a plurality of electronic elements. Information is recorded into these chips, which is then transferred to a base station. Typically, this is accomplished as the RFID tag, in response to a coded RF signal received from the base station, functions to cause the tag to reflect the incident RF carrier back to the base station thereby transferring the information.
Demand for functional components has expanded dramatically. Clearly, the functional components have been applied to make many electronic devices, for instance, the making of microprocessors, memories, power transistors, super capacitors, displays, x-ray detector panels, solar cell arrays, memory arrays, long wavelength detector array, phased arrays of antennas, or the like. The growth for the use of functional components, however, has been inhibited by the high cost of assembling the functional components into other substrates.
For instance, functional components such as semiconductor chips having RF circuit, logic and memory have been incorporated into an RFID tag. The tag also has an antenna, and a collection of other necessary components such as capacitors or battery, all mounted on a substrate and sealed with another layer of material. Often the assembling of these components requires complex and multiple processes thereby causing the price of the end product to be expensive. Further, the manufacturing of these RFID tag is costly because of inefficient and wasteful use of the technologies and the materials used to make these products under the current method.
Depositing semiconductor chips and other components onto substrates having the antenna is complex and tedious. The antenna material can be a thin film metal which can be deposited on substrates. Alternatively, the antenna material can also be adhered to the substrates using adhesive. These substrate are large compared to these semiconductor chip. The semiconductor chips to be interconnected to the antenna thus must be made large enough to allow for the interconnection. Because the semiconductor chips need to be large, material costs are thus high. Further, if there is a defective chip, the whole RFID tag would be defective and would not be discovered until the whole assembly is complete. Then, the whole RFID tag is disposed along with other good components. This is intrinsically wasteful and inefficient.
The functional components may also be incorporated into substrates to make displays such as flat panel displays, liquid crystal displays (LCDs), active matrix LCDs, and passive matrix LCDs. Making LCDs has become increasingly difficult because it is challenging to produce LCDs with high yields. Furthermore, the packaging of driver circuits has become increasingly difficult as the resolution of the LCD increases. The packaged driver elements are also relatively large and occupy valuable space in a product, which results in larger and heavier products.
Furthermore, large displays such as those for signage purposes are expensive to make. Large displays are often made out of material with large-feature-size patterns that must be connected to integrated circuits (ICs) with small feature sizes. the This results in expensive packages that are bulky and expensive.
In general, these functional components include semiconductors that are manufactured on silicon wafers and then are packaged in thick chip carriers. These chip carriers, such as leaded chip packages, Tape Automated Bonded (TAB) carrier or flip chip carriers are bulky and expensive. Alternatively, integrated circuits incorporating into functional micro blocks can be used. These blocks and their functional components have been invented and disclosed in a copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/251,220 which was filed Feb. 16, 1999 by the inventor John Stephen Smith and which is entitled “Functionally Symmetric Integrated Circuit Die.” This application has been issued as U.S. Pat. No. 6,291,896 on Sep. 18, 2001. This patent is hereby incorporated herein by reference.